02220cam a22002417 4500001000600000003000500006005001700011008004100028100002300069245011200092260006600204490004100270500001900311520126800330530006101598538007201659538003601731700002001767710004201787830007601829856003701905856003601942w2959NBER20150303183834.0150303s1990 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aJensen, Richard A.10aTariffs with Private Information and Reputationh[electronic resource] /cRichard A. Jensen, Marie Thursby. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc1990.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w2959 aNovember 1990.3 aWhen governments choose trade policy, rarely do they have complete information, At the time decisions are made, policy makers have only estimates of market responses, as well as the responses of foreign governments. In many realistic situations, even the policy objectives of other governments may not be known. For example, the balance of constitutional powers in the United States is often cited as a source of confusion as to objectives of U.S. trade policy. In this paper we examine the Bayesian Nash equilibria of several noncooperative tariff games with incomplete information, In the models examined, the home country has private information about whether its government is a low or high tariff type. If the foreign government is uncertain about this type in a one-shot game, its Nash equilibrium tariff will be lower (higher) than if it knew the home government were a low (high) tariff type. In two multistage games, misleading behavior by the home government is shown to be an equilibrium strategy for sufficiently high discount factors. Whether the uncertainty is persistent or can be resolved is shown to be important for welfare results in the multistage setting. In the models examined, tariff rules do not necessarily dominate discretionary policy. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web.1 aThursby, Marie.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w2959.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w295941uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w2959